When it comes to fan games, Mario and Minecraft have a surprisingly long history together. Whether it’s levels based on Minecraft in Mario platformers and spinoffs, areas from said games recreated in Minecraft or Mario himself added into Minecraft complete with Mario 64 physics, fans have mixed the two series in just about every way imaginable.
But now, we’ve got something even crazier. Something we didn’t even know was possible on the N64, let alone in Super Mario 64’s engine.
Yep, it’s Minecraft inside Super Mario 64. No, not a level based on it. Not some building mechanics added into a mod.
The actual Minecraft world rendering engine completely remade in Mario 64’s engine. As in, entire infinite procedurally generated Minecraft worlds running inside Super Mario 64’s engine, complete with placeable blocks and standard Mario physics. Here’s the original tweet by modder Arthurtilly:
I recreated Minecraft inside Super Mario 64! Not only does this run great on an emulator but with lower render distance it can even run on a real Nintendo 64! pic.twitter.com/E8Oz7d29Eq
— Arthurtilly (@arthurtilly413) May 19, 2025
Plus, the YouTube video in better quality:
Yeah, it’s pretty damn insane isn’t it? It’s a full-blown Minecraft style procedurally generated world running in real-time on the Nintendo 64, and works about as well as you’d expect it to. Okay, it’s not perfect. The draw distance is way lower than it’d be on PC or any modern console due to obvious hardware limitations, and things like mobs don’t seem to be present in this version as of now…
But come on. This is on the N64, a console with 8MB of RAM. The fact it run this well feels miraculous as is.
And it really makes us wonder something. If Mojang and Minecraft had been around in the early 90s, and the Nintendo 64 and PS1 were the consoles of choice when Minecraft was becoming popular…
Would we have gotten something like this as an official game? Instead of Minecraft on the Switch or Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5, would we have seen Minecraft on the N64, PS1 and Sega Saturn? Would a full-fledged port of the game have even been possible on those consoles, complete with all the mobs and interactions and features found in-game today?
Honestly, we really do have to wonder sometimes. We have to wonder how the world would have changed had actual N64 games looked and played like the projects we see nowadays. How would the industry differ if the likes of Return to Yoshi’s Island or Mario Kart 64 Amped Up were what Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 were like at launch?
Ah well, that’s for another day. For now though, this is a super impressive recreation of the Minecraft engine in Super Mario 64, and one we’re really excited to see more of in future. It’s still insane to us that the N64 can even run something like this, and the project just looks better and better every time we see it.
Here’s hoping for more updates in future!
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